She tries to figure out the riddle, and then I see her understand. “Oooooh,” she says. “You want to paint some pictures of me.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Artists need practice, and it’s important to study the figure.”
She asks me, “How do you know all that stuff?”
I tell her, “I don’t know. I just do. Anyway. Would you be my model? You’ll have to hold still for long periods.”
She nods.
And then I say, “And would you mind keeping it a secret?”
She nods, but she asks me why.
I have to think about exactly the right way to explain. “Everyone around us knows more about art than we do. So maybe if we do pictures by ourselves, we’ll get to be the experts for once.”
The next day I try to paint her with watercolors, but the paper gets too soggy and the colors run into each other. Her face and her hair turn into one big brown blob and I don’t even get to the rest of her body.
It’s frustrating, because I had such a clear picture in my mind about what the painting would look like. And I can’t do it. Emma’s patient but I’m not. After a couple of tries, I tell her thank you and give her a piece of chocolate left over from Halloween.
“Don’t worry,” she tells me, “I bet this is how a lot of artists start out.”
proof
the younger girl is older now, but you recognize her. Long legs, long hair, but no hips yet, no breasts. She’s nude, and she stands on the far edge of a small lake. On either side of her, pine stumps stud the ground, and you imagine splinters knifing through her bare feet as she climbed to her spot. Perhaps her shoes are hidden somewhere, behind a stump. Or perhaps she swam, but no, her hair is dry, so she must have walked from here, where the camera is, all the way around the lip of the lake, wading some of the way. Now she is far.
Her white body stands out against the dark lines of trees behind her. Her hands are open, solid; she spreads them wide, as if she is blessing the day. Her eyes are closed. A smile plays on her face, and it suggests to you that she knows something special, a secret. The sky behind her, beyond the forest, is open, painted with the whisper of clouds.
At the back of the picture, you see a dark smudge. At first you think it must be a mistake, but when you look closely, you make out looming clouds, a storm moving in. She doesn’t see it. It will come from behind her. From your vantage point, nothing acknowledges the wind about to whip up, the air that will fill with wet. And yet you know it is coming.
How will she get back?
chapter ten
myla came down the stairs with bedding in her arms. Through the open window, cool darkness filtered into the living room. Samuel was sitting on the couch with his hands folded in his lap. He looked up when he saw her descending. “I was wondering what happened to you guys,” he said as he glanced at her armload.
“The linen closet’s a mess,” she said.
“Oh.” Samuel stood, confusion on his face. “Well, I just wanted to say good night before I headed out—”
“These are for you,” said Myla as she handed him the bedding.
Samuel took the blankets and sheets from her arms, but was looking at her face, shaking his head. “I’m going to find a hotel. I don’t think I—”
“You don’t know these people. You eat dinner at their house, you have to sleep here. Their rules, not mine.” She tried to keep the warmth from her voice as she said: “They think we’re friends.”
Samuel raised an eyebrow. “And are we?”
Myla sat down on the couch. “You helped me out tonight. You helped us all out. And honestly, I was surprised. I didn’t expect you to show up on my doorstep claiming you could help and then actually be able to help me. So that counts for something.”
“On the other hand . . .” Samuel began for her.
“There is no other hand. A week ago I thought we were friends. This morning I thought we were enemies. Now you’re here. Now I don’t know what we are.”
“Fair enough,” said Samuel.
“And just how long are you planning on staying, anyway?” Myla caught herself. “That sounded ruder than I meant it. I just mean, how did you leave the college before the semester ended?”
Samuel smiled. “You’re not the only one who can just pick up and leave dramatically. No, I’m glad you asked. Two words: ‘family emergency.’ I’ve got to call in and let them know how my ‘grandmother’ is faring.” Myla felt a set of worried questions about to spill out, but Samuel spoke before she could voice them. “No pressure,” he said. “No expectations. It was my chance and I took it. I won’t regret that, no matter what happens.”
“Okay. So.” Myla stood as a pulse of exhaustion shivered up her body. She scanned the pile of bedding now pressed against Samuel’s chest. “Will you be warm enough?”
Samuel laughed. “It’s May. You’ve handed me, like, ten blankets. I think I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” said Myla.
“Okay,” said Samuel. Myla turned and walked to the stairs, but Samuel’s voice stopped her. “I want to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For what I said in my lecture. I wish I could take it back.”
Myla put her hand on the banister. It was smooth and cool. She closed her eyes and waited for the right words. “I learned a long time ago that no one can be responsible for anyone else’s beliefs. You believe what you believe. You know what you know. The best any of us can do is to examine our own prejudices, our own assumptions, and correct ourselves when we’re wrong.” She smiled at him, then looked up the staircase. She was weary. She put one foot on the next step.
“Sleep well,” Samuel said, after a moment. Myla climbed the carpeted stairs one at a time, into the light of the upstairs hallway.
Now Myla was lying in bed, and she could feel herself drifting, heavy, into sleep. She imagined Samuel curled almost directly beneath her, one floor down, and in her drowsiness, she remembered his breath, warm and frequent on her back. She remembered it, and it comforted her. She knew she’d dream.
She was in a dark room, alone. There was a television on the opposite wall, and though it provided both blinking light and image, no sound emerged. She knew, from entering this dream before, that she had no control over the volume. She stepped forward until the television came into focus, and watched what she knew would be showing. It was an interview, an interview that had never happened except in Myla’s nightmares. Pru sat in an armrested chair, wearing a collared dress with a white cardigan. Her feet barely reached the edge of the cushion. She was tiny, unable to span the distance to the floor.
Myla kept stepping closer and closer to the screen, trying to read Pru’s lips. The camera was now focused in close-up on her head; it switched quickly to the woman interviewing her, coiffed and red-faced. Myla knew the interviewer was starting to ask questions Pru wouldn’t know how to answer, and in her mind, Myla tried to send Pru messages: “Say you don’t know. Say you don’t want to answer that. Say they should ask Ruth.”
Even though Myla knew she had no power in this dream, no way to communicate anything to her sister, she still tried and tried, tried so hard it hurt her brain. She could see Pru shifting uncomfortably; she read her little sister’s body language loud and clear. There was nothing to be done but watch. That was when Myla would start to panic, would cough and punch. She’d yell at the television, try to get Pru to hear her. Meanwhile, the smell of pine would fill her lungs, taking away her air. She’d scream herself awake.
This time the end was different. The end was cut short. Instead of awakening in a room alone, having tried everything she could, she felt her mind being pulled back into her body. Someone was shaking her before she even started fighting hard. Someone was calling her back.
Myla opened her eyes and Samuel was over her. “It’s a dream,” he said. “A nightmare. Wake up. It’s over.”
She was confused. How was Samuel here, in her bedroom? She sat up in bed and noticed a shadow at the door.<
br />
Samuel turned and said, “She’s awake now.”
Myla heard Jane’s croaky nighttime voice: “Do you need anything?”
Myla couldn’t remember how to speak. Samuel said over his shoulder, “Go back to sleep. I’ll get her whatever she wants.”
Jane yawned. “Good night.” Her shadow faded down the hallway, and her bedroom door shut.
“God,” said Myla, coming into herself. “I must have been making a lot of noise.”
“Yeah,” said Samuel. “You were screaming.” He touched her hair. “Are you okay?” he asked, then took his hand away, as if aware that his touch might alarm her.
“Oh, sure,” said Myla. “I’m sorry I woke you guys up. I have these dreams sometimes. And they’re always pretty dark. But it’s gotten to a place where I can control them.” She shrugged. “Or at least I thought I could.”
“You never once woke me when—” Samuel caught himself. “How do the students react?”
Myla laughed, embarrassed. “Everyone makes such crazy sounds in the dorm that a little screaming doesn’t show up on the radar.” Then she asked, “How’s the couch?”
“Comfortable.” He stood up. “I guess I’ll be going. Unless you need something.”
“No.”
Myla lay back and listened to Samuel’s thuds down the stairs. As she closed her eyes, she realized her face was warm, but not from her nightmare. It was Samuel’s mention of the many nights they’d spent together. It was the sweet memory those words held of all the hours she’d slept in his bed, when his body had kept her from her terrors. And now he was below her, one floor below. She listened for him, but he was back in bed. The house was quiet. She slept.
PRETTY SOON I FORGET ABOUT the pictures. It gets cold, but at first it’s beautiful—yellow leaves make our street round with fake sunlight. Walking home from school is walking through a tunnel of gold. Even when it’s raining, which is all the time. Then the leaves paste themselves on the streets and make trenches of brown for every step I take. This lasts for months. I have to wear boots big enough to reach my knees. We lean the boots, green and heavy, upside down over the heating vent every night before I go to sleep. In the morning the soft flannel in them is burning hot. Burning hot all the way to school.
Myla decides she wants her own room. She says my things get in her way, and she kicks them when she yells down the stairs at David. “I’m a teenager now. Thirteen? Doesn’t that mean anything to you? None of the rest of my friends have to share a bed with an eight-year-old!” She says she needs her privacy, and when we’re alone, she mouths “Sorry.” But she isn’t, not really, and I don’t blame her. I don’t understand her enough to blame her. I want to be with her, but she doesn’t want to be near me. So I let her move.
David lets me have a bunk bed, even though it’s only me who sleeps in my room. I tell him I want to sleep in a place where you have to use a ladder to get up, and he says that sounds like a pretty good reason. When we go to pick it out, Myla tries out the beds with me and tells me she’s jealous because David never let her get a brand-new bed when she was eight. I pick out a shiny red one, with metal bars and legs. You can even take the bottom bunk out and make a desk space underneath it. Myla says that when I’m older, that kind of study space will be invaluable.
Then Myla moves down the hall to the guest room. That’s what we call it, but it’s never been a place for guests. More like David’s boxes, and even boxes of our mother’s books. David says he’ll move them down to the basement, but Myla likes them there. She acts like she doesn’t care but I know her better. I think David does too. He moves them into a corner and puts a sheet over them.
The first night without her is silent. I don’t get scared, but that’s the closest feeling I know to what it’s like. It makes no sense to me that her breath is gone. It makes no sense that she wants to sleep down the hall, when I’m so close. So I get out of bed and peek out my doorway. The hall is dark, and her door is closed. Light slices out from under her door. I squat down on the floor and wait. I wait for the light to turn out, and it takes a long time. When it does, when the faint click comes from her room, I know it’s time. I go back to my bed, fumble my feet over the cold steps of the ladder, and go up into the darkness. I climb into bed and wait for it to warm up. Only my heat now. Only my breath.
SAMUEL SNEAKED A CUP OF coffee into the library by holding it inside his briefcase. Myla watched him carefully balancing the bag as he walked through the building’s entrance. Sipping coffee in a library seemed an extravagance, one she’d never considered. She admired the way he persevered, risking spillage and burns, not to mention the possibility of scolding librarians, just because he loved coffee. She wondered if she needed any single thing that strongly.
Steve escorted them to a wide oak table where they spread out their notebooks. He placed David’s notebook squarely in the middle, patting it as he set it down. Myla felt a wave of fear that leaving it out on the table risked theft, but she knew this was paranoid. This notebook was her treasure, but to anyone else, it was nothing special. Steve showed them around, giving a mini-tour of the reference desk and the stacks and the reserve room. In the time since she’d last been here, the whole place had been renovated; things seemed slightly dislocated, though familiar.
Steve reminded them that he was doing the best he could, “But keep in mind, I’m no professor emeritus in art history. Hell, I was never emeritus in mathematics either, but who’s counting?” He suggested they start by looking at something concrete. So when they headed off into the stacks and returned with armfuls of large books, he rumbled around, examining each, then thrust one heavy tome into Myla’s arms and took one for himself. He let Samuel choose his own. Steve flipped through her book, pointed to a chapter, and said, “Start here.” His finger jabbed the page. They settled opposite each other, Steve smiling from finally being able to help her. They read in silence.
The book Steve had given Myla was about Rembrandt. At first Myla had no idea why he had chosen Rembrandt specifically—as far as she knew, none of the brainstorming circles in the notebook had anything to do with the Dutch painter. And the chapter Steve had given her was relatively mundane, a re-creation of Rembrandt’s married life to Saskia van Uylenburgh and analyses of some of the Saskia paintings: Saskia Wearing a Veil, Saskia Laughing. Then numerous speculations about whether Saskia was in fact the subject of two of Rembrandt’s paintings, both portraits of Flora, the goddess of spring. Myla felt her mind turning off, felt it asking, “Who cares which painting is based on her? If he loved her, wouldn’t they all be?” This had always been her problem with the study of art: she never understood how people could spend hours interpreting the tiniest turn of a finger or the direction of the eyes. When she looked at representations of Mary, she hardly looked at the robes themselves; she looked through them to the meaning behind them. What did azure mean to medieval painters imagining Mary? Why was she clothed in velvet? Myla was never satisfied by simply looking at the pictures. She wanted context. She wanted something bigger.
Then, just as she felt her resistance pushing her over into frustration, she flipped the page and fell into such exhilaration, it caught her breath. Steve looked up from his reading, and she smiled until he settled down again. For here was the author’s explanation of the attack on the Danaë.
In Leningrad, on June 15, 1985, a Lithuanian man had walked into the Rembrandt gallery in the Hermitage. The Danaë was the first painting in the gallery, and the man walked to her, stabbed her in the groin, punctured her a second time, and then threw sulfuric acid on her face, torso, and legs. The guards didn’t reach her in time to intervene, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have known what to do, because they hadn’t been trained for such an attack. Who wants to murder paintings?
No one knew why the man had attacked that particular painting. Some argued that it was simply because the Danaë was the first Rembrandt in the gallery, the most accessible, that he’d been out to damage anything. Some argued tha
t it was because the Danaë was the most expensive painting in the room. The attacker himself claimed it was out of nationalist protest.
But the book Myla read posited that it was none of these things. Rather, it theorized that the man had attacked the painting because of its pure sensuality: the display of Danaë’s recumbent nakedness, the slide of her breasts into her wide belly into the chalice of her hips, the fact that her crotch was at the very mathematically calculable center of the painting. What could be more of a taunt to a religious zealot?
Danaë was nude. She reclined on the bed. She had been imprisoned by her father, Acrisius, the king of the Argives, because of a prophecy that his grandson, Danaë’s son, would murder him. So Acrisius locked his daughter in a tall, unreachable tower. Jupiter, formidable, tricky Jupiter, found his way through the walls of the tower and impregnated Danaë in a golden shower of sunlight. And here she lay in Rembrandt’s eye, washed golden in the light of Jupiter’s lust. She bore Jupiter a child because he had shone upon her. And then, thousands of years later, a man painted her story, and hundreds of years after that, another man came and cut her with a knife.
Myla scribbled down a few notes, thinking about how David would have spoken to her about Rembrandt. He would have reminded Myla the child that Rembrandt and his art had given Danaë life, but Myla the adult knew things were more complicated. The painter may have given Danaë life, but he’d also failed to protect her. He’d put her out there, left her subject to someone’s knife.
She lifted her eyes, watching Samuel as he read. His words from the lecture hall echoed in her head, filling her with doubt. If exploring this notebook meant having to think about things like this, about all their lost chances, was such exploration truly worth it? Pondering these issues meant taking David down from the shelf, studying him. And that meant picking him apart, examining him critically, doubting him, judging his limitations. Perhaps that would be too hard. She closed the book. She needed space for thinking. She needed to move.
The Effects of Light Page 13